This morning (Aug 13, 1997 -- Associated Press report: "Iran
hangs 'Tehran Vampire'"), Gholamreza Khoshrou Kouran Kordieh was
publicly whipped and hanged in Tehran in front of thousands of spectators
who clapped and cheered as they watched this public display of collective
sadism and cruel justice.

Kordieh may have been guilty or not of the horrible crimes he was accused
of (something we would never know, knowing the notoriously flawed nature
of the Iranian justice system), but from his words quoted in newspapers
and his televised "confessions" he showed all the hallmarks of
a sick person (even as a killer).

The actual/other killer(s) may be still at large - and millions of girls
and women would feel no safer going out on the streets or getting into
unmarked cabs in Tehran or elsewhere.

Society may (at best) have gotten itself rid of a sick person - but
NOT of a sickness -- a sickness best displayed by a government bent on
using torture, death and execution as means of asserting authority (and
popularity), a semi-official tabloid press feeding on public anxiety, hysteria
and prejudice (and in the process, fuelling widespread racist anti-Afghani
sentiments too), and a public which enjoys the spectre of a person being
tortured and hanged.

A sick person is down - but in the process, a society bares its collective
sickness to the world.